Smoke on (and over) the water

Today's entry seeks to bridge the gap between yesterday's entry and tomorrow's second edition of "Theory Thursdays." I want to further explore the sealed wall in the Swan, the "incident," and everyone's favorite monster, Smokey.

The smoke monster is potentially one of those "won't get fully answered until Season 6" mysteries, up there with "What is the Island?" and "Will Jack ever pull off a plan successfully?" I say "potentially," however, due to the end of Season 3, where I feel Season 4 is going, and the release of a cryptic film just a month before the new season of Lost begins.

Spoilers for Season 3 below. Beware all ye who have not seen that hellaciously good string of episodes.

So, at the end of Season 3, we see our nominal protagonist, Jack, pulling his best late-era Jim Morrison, fully bearded, often drunk, blasting Nirvana from his car stereo. The big twist to what we thought were flashbacks was, of course, that they were flash-forwards: events that happened AFTER the "rescue" on the Island. I put "rescue" in quotes because neither Jack, nor Kate, nor the very short dead guy in the coffin, seem terrifically thrilled about being back in Los Angeles. Something truly horrific has happened, and while we don't know what, it's prompting Jack to convince Kate to try and return to the place from which they so desperately wanted to escape.

Long before this, we learned of a sealed-off wall within the Swan, a wall that contained unique magnetic properties. The Swan's nominal purpose was to discharge the build-up from this location by pressing a series of numbers every 108 minutes in order to essentially let off some electromagnetic steam. This process was put into place by an unknown "incident" decades earlier. The sealed-off wall used to lead to a service passageway that nominally linked various parts of the island via an underground system of tunnels hinted at but never truly shown.

Now how does this all tie into Smokey?

Well, remember that in Season 1, Smokey itself used to seem to come from underground, often uprooting trees as it chased its prey. Remember how it seems tethered to the ground, unable to leap over the sonic fence around the barracks. Now, remember how, on the Blast Door Map inside the Swan, there were various references to "CV": revealed in a Lost jigsaw puzzle to refer to a "Cerberus vent." "Cerberus" is a name of a 3-head mythological beast guarding Hades, and a moniker for Smokey on the show.

So, we have the following: a protagonist back in the "real world" wanting to correct a mistake that happened on the Island, an unknown "incident" that caused the sealing of passageways connecting parts of the Island, we have a monster that seemingly roams these passageways, and we have a show that isn't afraid to use things such as jigsaw puzzles in order to drop mythology about the show.

What does all that lead to?

You'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out. In the mean time, you might want to give this a view. Might come in handy for "Theory Thursday."

But think about this:  what if the "incident" is what birthed Smokey in its current state, and what if someone tried to take Smokey into the real world?

Ryan also posts every 108 minutes over at Boob Tube Dude.

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